Today, the kids each gave me "pink puff" flowers from the cherry tree which they collected right before school. I wore them in my hair. Later, when we got home, I showed them how to press flowers on wax paper in a book. They wanted to know why I would do that. To save them, though they'll turn a little brown. Why? Because everything alive changes and dies, just like everything that eats poops.
The same conversation happened earlier in the day. Where are our tulips? They're gone now. Why? Flowers don't last all the time. Remember, it's just like the trees were brown and now they will be green. And then it will be fall and winter. And then it will be spring again.
Where does meat come from? Are there eating chickens and looking-at chickens?
Why can't we see our friend in Chicago who died a year ago again? Where is she?
What happened to all the dinosaurs?
Where was I before I was a baby?
I don't know. No one really knows. But we can think on what the answers are.
I guess their growing up, and mine too, is about our thinking on, and living with, these unanswerable questions together.
Charlie is almost 13 and has asked me questions about radio active decay, I was just able to answer them but I doubt I will be able to when he gets specialised. Be ready for it.
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